One Awesome Blogging Tool You Really Need Now!

Many bloggers swear by their favorite tools to help grow their website. There’s best automation tools, great pop-up box makers, tools to grow your e-mail list, welcome mat creators and so on an on. What if there was just one awesome blogging tool that did all of it? Well, there actually is. It’s called Sumo (formerly SumoMe). I’ve been using this tool for some time now and thought I’ll introduce it to my readers.

Below I will go over some of the best Sumo features you can set up on you blog right away.

*The following post contains Affiliate links, which means I may earn commission on a sale of a product you purchase through my links at no extra cost to you.

What is Sumo?

Sumo is an awesome blogging tool or a suite of apps that you can easily add to almost any website.

What Can Sumo Do For Your blog?

• Increase web traffic to your site
• Get you more subscribers for your email list
• Help you get more social shares for your articles
• Give you Analytics tools so you know what’s performing best on your site

How Easy Is It To Set Up Sumo?

According to Sumo, if you have a WordPress site you can try Sumo for free and have it up and running in a matter of minutes. All you have to do is sign-up for it for free and insert an easy line of code in the head of your website. And voila, Sumo is there for you. If you’re not that code savvy (and unless you’re a techie, who really is) there are apps that can insert the code for you.

Once Sumo is running on your website, you need to pick which apps you want to use. Depending on the app you choose, you might be able to use it for free or you might need to upgrade your account to a paid account to use it.

What Apps Should You Use?

Well, that depends on you and what you’re trying to accomplish with your blog. But I will go over some of their best apps that are worth trying out.

Welcome Mat

A welcome mat is a great tool to offer a freebie. I use it to quickly get people to notice my free social media resource I give out when people sign up for my newsletter. The good thing about this tool is that it’s Google complaint. Google started penalizing people for having pop-ups on their blog as soon as someone visited their site. If the pop-up appeared too soon and covered up too much of text of the website Google decided to down rank those websites. However, with a Welcome Mat that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Once you have set up your Welcome Mat you can have it only show up for new visitors to your site. Therefore you don’t have to worry about annoying anyone else who has already visited your blog before. Another bonus is that you can customize the picture, colors and fonts of your Welcome Mat to match the look and feel of your website.

List Builder

This is another awesome blogging tool to encourage readers to join your e-mail list. You can easily set it up to offer a giveaway for various blog posts on your site.

Giveaway Ideas:

• A PDF related to your blog post
• A checklist
• An audio or video recording of a tutorial
• A customizable template

This tool is highly customizable. You can pick the theme, colors and branding that goes with your business. It also allows you to do various A/B testing to see which images, text and content does better on your website.

Share Bar

This awesome blogging tool is one of my favorites. Placing the various social media sharing icons right next to your blog post encourages shares. And Sumo lets the share buttons move as the reader scrolls down to read so there’s never a missed opportunity to share that post. The Share Bar can be placed on the top, side or bottom of your posts for easy sharing.

Image Sharer On Hover

Here’s where you can easily add that Pinterest button right when someone hovers over your image. I love it when I see that little icon pop-up. It really encourages your readers to share that particular image and takes them straight to Pinterest. What an awesome and handy blogging tool.

Highlighter

On the other hand the highlighter tool will prompt your readers to share a selected text straight on Twitter or Facebook. All they have to do is log into their Twitter or Facebook account and share whatever you selected them to share. This is super nifty and what a lifesaver.

PRO TIP: When you have these tools activated on your website, Sumo will send you a weekly e-mail with all your stats. So you’ll know exactly how many people shared your content on the sites you selected i.e. Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ etc.

Analytics

Some people love these tools some can’t be bothered. But if you’re one of those people that love checking stats Sumo has those for you as well. You can even check out heat maps, which are visual representation of your site’s content. View them to see how much people read, what draws their attention and where they lose interest. Then you can use that information to craft a better blog post. Perhaps people love a longer or shorter intro, or more images or they loose interest because your posts are too long. This is great and handy blogging tool you will have at your fingertips.

Connect Sumo To Google Analytics

Speaking of Analytics, did you know you could also connect Sumo with Google Analytics? Oh yes you can. When you connect these two platforms via the Sumo dashboard, Sumo will simplify the Analytics for you. I suggest checking these stats at least once a month to see what stands out. Use the posts that receive the most traffic to create future giveaways. Your audience’s reaction can guide you towards creating more content based on what they’re looking for.

What Is The Cost Of Sumo?

Okay, now on to the nitty-gritty. There must be a cost associated with all these awesome blogging tools, right? Well, yes and no. As I mentioned before you can sign-up for Sumo for free. But there are some limitations to what’s included in the free version. Some of the tools I mentioned in this article such as the Welcome Mat, Share Bar, Image Sharer and List Builder are free. However, if you want to connect the List Builder to your e-mail provider Sumo will ask you to sign-up for the paid version.

There are a number of pricing plans that Sumo offers so you can pick a plan that you can afford. Occasionally, Sumo will offer additional savings to those in the know. And that’s usually the best time to sign-up for their services as they will be at a great discount. Also, if you’re sure you need these features and you sign-up for the whole year you will get additional discount. So by doing so you will save yourself some coin in the end.

 

Why You Need This Awesome Blogging Tool!

Let’s go over this once again. Here are some pros and cons to help you decide whether Sumo is the right awesome blogging tool for you.

PROS

• Sumo is very easy to set-up and to learn
• This is an awesome tool for growing your email list or increasing website traffic
• Sumo is consistently updating their apps

CONS

• Premium features can be cost prohibitive to new bloggers
• Sumo may be geared more towards bloggers than independent authors
• The amount of available apps can be overwhelming at first

In the end the decision to get Sumo is yours. Bear in mind that this awesome blogging tool should be viewed as an investment in your blogging business. If you’re just blogging as a hobby Sumo might be too much for you. But if you take your blogging seriously, are planning to stick around for the long haul and want to grow, this is a great blogging tool to consider. There’s a reason Sumo has over 5 million users including some big time bloggers and influencers.

What do you think of this blogging tool? Do you use Sumo? What has been your experience using it? Share with me in the comments below. I would love to hear your thoughts. Want more blogging tools? Check out my post all about Pinterest here!

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